"The editors suggest if ONLY the 60 million Americans who voted for The O were exposed to a short lesson or two on conservative principle -- maybe the Reader's Digest condensed version of "The Road To Serfdom," they'd have smacked their heads -- d'oh! -- and come home to Team R.
Delusional nonsense. The Republicans spent over a billion dollars. There was no lack of a megaphone. They had two of the most inhumanly self-disciplined, sunny, kind-hearted, intelligent and personally spotless standard-bearers ever, who criss-crossed the country explaining themselves with clarity, wit, and empathy. While MSM Fifth Columnists were as potent as ever, the alternative voices on radio and the Internet were more than sufficient to get the word out. We were not reduced to sharing photocopied samizdat in basements. I do not believe for one moment that there were millions and millions of fully persuadable American voters who simply failed to hear the message, or heard the message garbled.
The plain and simply fact is that in a dispiriting and evil environment, another Great Depression that has dragged on for four years (and will for another four, if not ten), racism, narrow identify politics, paranoia, and envy carried the day, abetted by one of the most cynical vote-buying Administrations since FDR.
People heard the message. They just weren't buying it. And there is absolutely nothing that can be done about that, from the point of view of the would-be messengers. There are no tactical corrections that can reverse a strategic dead-end. Right now, the American voter is no more inclined to listen to the message of conservative values than the drunk who hasn't hit bottom yet is ready to hear the Twelve Step Program's Step #1 (admitting you have a problem you can't handle).
I think the comparison is apt. The value of individual liberty, limited government, and cherishing enterprise will not resonate until the United States "hits bottom," and it is simply no longer remotely possible for the intellectual Stalinists in the media or professional class to paper over the middle-class misery with deceit ("core" inflation), scapegoating (Bain! George Bush!), and colorful distractions (Look out for your lady bits! Isn't the President sexy?)
The only serious question is how far down that bottom lies. We actually all thought we'd reached it in 2010, with unending 8% unemployment (or worse if you count permanently unemployed), $4 gas, rampant hidden inflation in food, the Federal Reserve printing money to "buy" 70% of the Federal government's bonds, tee hee.
But we were wrong. As Mark Steyn says, there is a lot of ruin in a great nation. $16 trillion in debt is not enough for the standard American voter to reconsider his viewpoint. $4 gas is not enough. The destruction of the savings of seniors with 0.25% interest rates is not enough. The wholesale impoverishment of a generation of young people, unable to find jobs, saddled with mountains of undischargeable student loan debt for utterly useless degrees isn't enough. All of these things have just convinced the relevant parties to double down on dumb. It's all about protecting the right to abortion! Republicans want to bring back slavery! If you are swayed by such frivolity, you are just like the alcoholic not yet ready to face cold reality.
What will be enough? That is the question. People only re-examine their core philosophies when they have reached genuine and immense misery. $5 gas? Not likely. Maybe $10 or $15. Maybe tax hikes of 25% on people making over $50k, which is about what Obama needs to propose to avoid interest rates skyrocketing by the end of his first term, as bond holders give up on the "full faith and credit of the United States," ha ha. Maybe four more years of 25% unemployment for young people, although I doubt it -- Europe has seen that for decades, with no serious self-reflection.
If I had to pick the most likely scenario, I would say the inflation beast finally getting out of control. When food and fuel prices are remorselessly climbing 10-25% a year, with wages stagnant, and no amount of cheery BS from government liars can conceal it, that may bring reflection, just as it did in the 70s, and a new generation can learn the age-old lession that robbing Peter to pay Paul eventually destroys Paul, too."
-http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/332923/now-what-editors